


A Deep and Angry Sea

by bold_seer



Category: Merchant of Venice - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Antagonism, Ficlet, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 15:53:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10857186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bold_seer/pseuds/bold_seer
Summary: What he was, they’d carved him into.





	A Deep and Angry Sea

_You spit upon me? I should do_ worse _upon you._

He hated Antonio for lending money because he could afford to, hated him for being a Christian, hated all Christians, hated them for hating him, hated Jessica for running off to them, and he hated –

He hated.

“I won’t kneel forever,” said Antonio, unyielding and unrepentant. “To beg for my life.”

Here was a man stripped of all his wealth, worth no more than the dirt on Shylock’s floor, and he held onto his haughtiness when he should have been grovelling. He was embracing his discomfort, clinging to it as if it sustained him. It was supposed to be degrading. It was supposed to degrade him. Turn him into something small and insignificant that you could bury into the ground with your shoe, then trample over.

His hands were shaking. He imagined Antonio with a cut to his face, a bruise, some mark or another that their fortunes had changed, but what good would it do, what good. Pitiful fool. Who was so careless with their life? He had a daughter. He’d had a daughter. He’d had a wife.

He’d loved.

What he was, they’d carved him into. And now he was going to, he was going to plunge in the knife, _and take and take and take_ , everything that they had robbed him of, everything he had earned. If he lived, he’d rather he were dead.

Antonio took a deliberate breath, bracing himself for something deeply unpleasant. “Please –”

But Shylock grabbed him by the neck and whispered those words into his ear.

_It does not please me._


End file.
